Win 10, device manager just crashes most of the time

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richms

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#204957 24-Oct-2016 23:16

Anyone else had this problem? I choose device manager from the menu and it shows with no content for several mins, before crashing with the mmc has caused an error message.

Googling gets people suggesting a sfc check and regsvr32 on the dll for it, which I have done, but it still happens.

Occasionally I will get into it OK, but as soon as I unplug or plug in something it will crash, or it will crash on its own when just left for a while. Or if I choose to uninstall a device in device manager.

Computer is otherwise working fine other than taking an eternity to add hardware when I plug something in that is new or into a different port (like 15 mins before device is ready to use)

Anything else to look at before I just bite the bullet and do an all day time consuming reinstall of the computer?

Richard rich.ms

richms

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#1657152 25-Oct-2016 00:33

Am trying a ghost device remover - https://ghostbuster.codeplex.com/ - it eventually loaded and shows I had 19000 ghost devices, almost all volume shadow things so will remove them and see how things go. That may explain device managers laggyness to open.

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gzt

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#1657277 25-Oct-2016 10:42

The symptom reminds me of windows 95/98, but that was a driver detection thing.

Never heard of this ghost device issue before. Did it work?

richms

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#1657380 25-Oct-2016 12:17

Well I left it running all night. The author says that 19000 is heaps of them, and now my device manager opens in a couple of seconds and doesnt crash. So yeah, mission accomplished.

It also took care of the 10's of serial ports that were used from plugging random arduino and compatibles into various ports, so Im not having to figure out if I want com78 or com82 for which board now which is good.

Still getting frequent refreshes of device manager tho, so will have another run of it tomorrow and see how many new ghosted devices are there.

Richard rich.ms

richms

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#1657401 25-Oct-2016 12:38

Its sorted the long delay to add hardware that has plagued me for ages and also the crashing completely now. Yay for trying random apps that other forums have posts saying fix issues with things. Wonder why microsoft dont have the old things clear out after a while. Will see what the reboot time is like next. This machine has been slow but I always thought that was the large number of HDDs and SSDs attached.

Richard rich.ms